Saturday, October 24, 2009

A Day With Randy's Cannon

Before and after delivering "Starfish" (now known as "Max") to his new owner, I spent the day with Randy and his reenactment group at Pioneer Village. Since Mikey missed a picture of the cannon this morning, I thought I'd share some of the day with you.This cannon is a replica built by Randy's Uncle Mike. He passed away from cancer last year and the cannon came to Randy, who had promised to keep it shown. It was quite the gun at the time and all the reenactors like to check it out.Getting readyWaiting their turn to fire the Williams GunFIREThis is Mike's Mountain Howitzer - it uses a load 4x the size of the Williams Gun and the smoke shows it!Even the guns make big clouds of smoke!Some guys have to play dead!Can you spot the casualty?Cleaning the cannon after the first battleThe First Texas Artillery, joined by the First Texas InfantryThis is Mac who was kind enough to share his shade and chairs with usThere were even a couple of women there and... yes... Randy has plans for me too! But I think I should insist on bringing my horse!Lunch break inside the fortI think this is my favorite picture of the day :)After lunch I find Randy showing the Williams Gun to a bunch of spectators...The last shot of the day was a double out of the Mountain Howitzer. A big boom, a huge cloud of smoke, and a rolling echo off the mountains in the distance. the crowd goes wild... and several car alarms go off in the parking lot! All the guys start clapping each other on the back and grinning ear to ear, exclaiming "listen to that, we set off the car alarms!" I just had to laugh... a bunch of men in their 40s, 50s and 60s... and the average age of the group is FIVE!!!!!

But they really enjoyed their day, and with all the crap life has handed Randy this last year, it did my heart good to see him enjoying the day so much!

5 comments:

I knew it was some kind of cannon. As you drove off I thought "Was that a cannon? What the heck kind of re-enactment is he going to?" Very cool!And no worries, I did have to get up EARLY anyway, lol. I wasn't complaining (much, lol) but tomorrow no one better wake me up!Randy looks SO in his element. I almost didn't recognize him. Very cool for him to get to do that and he looks so happy :) You ought to do some too!! No horses! (can you imagine what they'd do when those guns went off? Wow! Super cool post, I had no idea Randy was into that. I'm glad to see him doing what he loves and surrounded by people who love it just as much.And thank you again, for taking "Max" along with you. I so very much appreciate that and your post made me cry happy tears. Thanks, crazy donkey lady :)

Good LORD! I've been telling Tim that he can't have a cannon. I've been telling him that he doesn't need a cannon. I've been telling him that nobody has a cannon. Now he knows Randy has a cannon. Thanks. Thanks bushels...